Summary

Peter flaps a hand in the air, grasping for words. All he’s left with is the thought that’s been running through his head all night: “There was this dilapidated building out near Hell’s Kitchen, rotted all the way through, and I kept staring at it and thinking, This thing could go down at the smallest breeze.” Peter gestures at the roof over their head. “Even this apartment could go down easily enough.”

May rubs his hand. “Buildings don’t just collapse, Peter. Did something happen to make you worried about that?”

Peter shakes his head. He doesn’t ever give her details. He doesn’t tell her about the intimate, gnawing kind of horror that came with being trapped beneath a collapsed building and knowing no one was coming to save you; the way it felt like his bones were being ground into the damp cement; how he’d felt small and very soft, and how his thoughts keep going over the components of a building—rusted metals, long nails strong enough to jut through cement—and how that might’ve pierced him if he’d moved wrong, like a fork pulled through slow cooked meats.

(Peter learns to cope and communicate with the people around him, post-Homecoming.)